The Holocaust Study Tour is an educational tour that motivates and challenges students to rethink one of the most horrific events in history. Traveling through Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland, students make meaningful cultural connections to the people and nations they visit.
Read below to learn more about the trip and it's purpose.
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Thursday, April 14, 2016

Day 12 - Auschwitz-Birkenau

Last evening our Berlin
guide, Olaf, joined us for dinner.He
had flown to Krakow to be able to spend the day with us as he wanted to share
the experience of having Shalmi as a guide through Auschwitz-Birkenau.Early this morning, at 6:30 a.m. Olaf and
Paulina met us at the hotel and we headed off for the day in Oswięcim, the Polish town where
Auschwitz is located. Perhaps we should not have said anything about the
weather, because today it rained all day.In some ways it seemed fitting.

At 8:00 a.m. we arrived at Konzentration Lager [KL] Auschwitz.Auschwitz was not one camp but was a complex
of three primary sites:Auschwitz I was
the administrative center and concentration camp for primarily Polish prisoners,
Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II] was the death camp, and Buna [Auschwitz III]
was for manufacturing and testing facilities, which also had dozens of labor
subcamps.

We had requested Wojciech, as
our guide through Auschwitz I which now serves as the museum.Wojciech had been our guide several times before
and we had been very impressed with both his knowledge and his style of
interacting with the students.We
started under the iconic sign:Arbeit
Macht Frei.There, he gave us the
history of the camp.Built in the town
of Oswiecim, Auschwitz is the Germanization of the name of the town.It was established by the Nazis in 1940 and
was in use until the Allied liberation in 1945. The camp has 28 brick buildings, called
Blocks, which served as barracks.

“The one who does not
remember history is bound to live through it again.” --- George Santayana.This quote confronts all visitors at the
entrance to Block 4.

In 1940 there was only
Auschwitz I which functioned as a prisoner of war camp.In 1941 Himmler ordered the enlargement of
the camp and Auschwitz-Birkenau was created.In 1942, after the Wannsee Conference, this camp starts to function as a
death camp.Wojciech told us that of the
11 million Jews living in Europe, 90% lived in Central and Eastern Europe which
is why all of the death camps were located in Poland.He also said that 75% of the Jews killed in
Auschwitz were not Polish, but because of railroad connections, many Jews were
deported here from large centers such as Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague and
Berlin.In 1940 he told us there were
only two languages spoken:German and
Polish.By 1944 more than 20 different languages
were spoken.

The living conditions in the
camp were severe ---hard work, starvation, disease and brutal treatment--- so
that the average time between one’s arrival in Auschwitz I and his death was
about 2 months. An estimated 1.1 million people were murdered in
Auschwitz.An urn with a small amount of
human ash symbolizes the loss of all these lives.

In Block 4 we were shown a
large model of a gas chamber which we would see later in the day, in Birkenau,
which showed the three phases of its operation.First, there was the disrobing room where people undressed.The second phase was where two Zyklon B pellets
were dropped through the vents in the roof, which with water, created a deadly
hydrogen cyanide.The total time
necessary to kill all 1500 people in the gas chamber was twenty minutes.The third phase required Jewish prisoners in
a special unit called the Sonderkommando, to remove the bodies, shave the hair
and remove any gold fillings in the teeth,and then burn the corpses in the underground crematorium.The average length of time one served in the
Sonderkommando before being killed himself, was 3 months.

InBlock 5 were exhibited the ‘evidence of
crimes’:belongings brought by victims
to Auschwitz, confiscated by the SS and found after liberation.Thousands of items, every one belonging to a
man, woman, or child, murdered in the camp. Separate rooms contained shoes,
artificial limbs and crutches, eyeglasses, prayer shawls, shaving kits, household
cooking items, and other items which had been packed in their labeled
suitcases.25% of the victims in the
camp were children.Several cases contained
baby clothes, dolls, and rattles.These
cases provided physical evidence of the existence of so many
victims as well as giving us some insight into what they might have thought would be their future. Before a case of
tins of shoe polish, Wojciech noted that these would be packed by men who
thought they might need to be looking their best, to look for a job.

Before we entered a long room in which we were asked to take no
photos, Wojciech said “Nowhere else can you be as close to the victims of the
camp as in this room.” A wall-to-wall display case held more than 4,000 pounds
of human hair.The hair was sold to
textile manufacturers for production of army uniforms or gloves and socks for
railroad workers.We were shown a bolt
of fabric; 30% of it was made from human hair.We could see strands of hair protruding from the fabric.

Leaving Block 5,we were
taken next to Block 7 which showed us the living quarters of the prisoners in
Auschwitz. Walking through the hall of the building we saw photographs of
the predominantly Polish prisoners, women on the left and men on the right,
with their name, prisoner number, nationality, date deported to Auschwitz and
date of death. We had been told that the average life expectancy of a prisoner
in Auschwitz I was 2 months because of the harsh conditions and the pictures
bore this out. These photographs were taken as a part of the processing
into the camp, most by Wilhelm Brasse, himself a prisoner. He spoke
fluent German and was a photographer before the war. This made him useful
to the Nazis who wanted good photographs of the prisoners as well as someone to
take pictures at their private SS parties and of the experimental surgeries.
In this manner he was able to survive the war. Wojciech told us that
it was traditional for a moment of silence to be observed at Jewish burial in
memory of the departed. If that we're to be done for each person whose
photograph hung in the corridors of Block 7, it would require 8 hours. If
this same moment of silence was to be observed for each of the 1.1 million
victims of Auschwitz, it would take two and a half years.

There were 300,000 survivors of Auschwitz, we were told. But the
official number of Jews in Poland is less than 5,000 today.

In Block 11, which served as
the prison for the camp we saw three types of punishment cells:dark cell, starvation cell and the standing
cell in which three or four people could be forced to stand for days at a
time.Punishment might be 3-5 days in
one of these cells for a minor infraction of a camp rule or 2 weeks for
sabotage.Time in a punishment cell
could be a death sentence.We visited
the execution wall between Blocks 10 and 11, where tens of thousands of
prisoners were lined up naked and shot.

We visited Block 27, an
exhibit created by Yad Vashem which opened a few years ago.In the 1970’s the Auschwitz State Museum
started allowing national exhibits to be set up in different blocks.Holland, Hungary, France and Belgium, for
example, each have a special exhibit highlighting that nation’s experience
during the Holocaust.From the
perspective of Israel / Yad Vashem, Wojciech said, Auschwitz-Birkenau has a
special place, because it is the symbol of Jewish suffering in Europe.Most Jews didn’t die in Auschwitz but it is
symbolic of what the Holocaust means to Jews.The exhibit has several rooms:one in which Jewish life before the war is portrayed in film and
pictures, a second room has screens which show Nazi propaganda speeches; a
third room entitled “Geography of Murder” shows the extermination camps as well
as killing sites on a huge wall map; a fourth room in which one can listen to
testimony of survivors; and a fifth room which has children’s drawings painted
on the walls.The final room is an
exhibit called the Book of Names.In a
long room, a book as big as the room, fills two sides of thousands of pages,
listing the names and some information such as place of birth and birthdate,
place and date of death, if these were known, of more than four million documented
Jewish victims of the Holocaust.This
was a powerful exhibit for many of our students who found their own last name
or the name of a friend in the book; one student found names of her family
members.

Our last stop in Auschwitz I
was the crematorium of the camp.There
we saw the home of the camp commandant Rudolf Hoss and the gallows where he was
hanged for his war crimes in 1947.The
gallows was used once --- for his execution.We then walked through the crematorium which was used to cremate the
bodies of people who had perished in the camp and had been used as the
prototype for the crematoria we would see this afternoon in Birkenau.

After a brief bag lunch on
the bus as it was still raining, we drove the short distance to Auschwitz-Birkenau
where Shami spent three hours showing us the death camp.He talked about how the camp had changed in
the spring of 1944 when the Nazis expected one million Hungarian Jews to be
transported here.It was then that they
added the rail spur coming into the camp, preparing for the influx of
prisoners.

We visited the quarantine
barracksTowards the end of the war,
Germany needed more workers as they sent more men and young boys to the
front.Jewish workers were shipped into
Germany to fulfill that need.The
problem was that these Jews coming from camps were poorly nourished and could
have diseases and secondly, they were Jews:according to Nazi racial ideology, by definition they were disease.Germany by now was essentially ‘Judenrein’
[Jew-free] but they were essential to the war effort so they were brought here
and housed [no sleeping area -just an
open space at one end and long rows of latrines at the other] for three days
until they were declared disease-free and could continue their journey into
Germany.

We also saw the Czech family camp which Shalmi had spoken to us
about in Terezin. The Czech Jews had been transported to Auschwitz to
reduce the overcrowding prior to the Red Cross visit as part of the
beautification project. Once the visit had occurred, however, the Czech
camp was liquidated and all of its inmates sent to the gas chambers.
Again, Shalmi reminded us that the last thing the Czech Jews did before
entering the gas chamber, was to sing the Czech national anthem. “People’s attitudes can change. Before the 20th century the Czechs
were tremendously antisemitic. Then came
Masaryk who changed the attitudes of the Czechs towards the Jews and the Jews
towards the Czechs.” Positive change can
happen with the right leadership.

We also learned of the existence of two other camps: the
Mengele Twin Camp and the Gypsy camp.

Passing a large pool of
water, Shalmi told us it was one of two such pools, required by the Swiss
insurance company, Allianz, before it would agree to insurance
Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Next Shalmi spoke of the
importance of “The Ramp” where the selection process was made determining
whether one was to live or die.He told
us several emotional stories shared with him as he chronicled their testimony,
in which they described their experiences on The Ramp.He told us many survivors often speak of
their life “before the ramp” and their “life after the ramp.”

We saw the remains of the crematoria which had been destroyed by
the Nazis before fleeing. Shalmi drew
our attention to one beam. The Nazis
hired professionals to do their construction. This architect knew he was
creating a crematorium. It wasn’t enough
to make straight, simple lines - he put
moldings on the beam to make it more beautiful.
He was concerned with aesthetics as he was making a chamber of
death.

The 'sauna' served as the building where those who had been
chosen to live were processed (uniforms, tattooed, shaved) and we walked
through the processing rooms, and spent some time looking at the photographs
displayed which had been found in peoples’ suitcases. We also viewed the remains of the warehouses
called Canada which were massive storage buildings which housed confiscated
Jewish property taken at the ramp, before walking back to the bus.

On our way back to Krakow, we dropped Olaf off at the airport
and then continued to our hotel where we had a little time to dry out and get
ready for dinner tonight near the Market Square.

36 comments:

The fact about how in the span of four years the amount of languages spoken at Auschwitz grew from two to twenty is astounding. It is hard to comprehend everything that happened at Auschwitz. The pictures of all the shoes was especially moving, I had seen something similar at the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. however, to see the picture from Auschwitz was even more impactful. All the posts have been eye opening and thank you for posting about the trip.

It is truly horrifying to read what the Jews had to experience at Birkenau. The fear they must have felt is unimaginable, and astonishing that they were able to persevere for as long as 2 months. The pictures of the shoes, name records, and belongings of those who had died causes a gut-wrenching feeling. To me, the most horrific thing would be being one of the Sonderkommando or the photographer. To work against their own people, with no guarantee of their own fate. Picking the fillings out of the tooth of a dead friend, or dragging them off to be cremated. I cannot fathom the pain and fear that they must have felt during the short time they spent in Birkenau.

Looking at this blog, what surprised me is what Auschwitz looks like. It's ironic that a place so synonymous with death and suffering can exist amid such a beautiful surrounding. The stunning scenery of rural Poland starkly contrasts the grizzly events that took place there.

The pictures and videos alone had me in tears. It must have been a very emotional day, especially listening to Shalmi's stories of the ramp. Because of people like him, the victims will never be forgotten

Previously I only read about Auschwitz in the book, and by that time I was astonished. But today when I see the pictures about those bones, those corpes, and those gas chamber, I become more shocked and frightened. For people live in the peaceful life today, it's really hard to imagine all the torture the Jews had suffered before, and even we will never truly understand those feeling. But asking people live today to get the firt-hand experience of the torture may not be the true purpose of building such museum. On the contrast, the purpose the museum is to admonish people to cherish the hard-earned peace and happy life. The purpose of the so many WWII movies,like the Jewish uprising movies,is not to tell us how bad Germans are, but to ask us to remember our forefathers, to remember their bravery, to remember that they did strive for the rights, and we need to learn from such spirit. I really love the saying “The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.”Therefore, to prevent our generation to live through the nightmare again is the most significant meaning of all the movies and museums. Great thanks to all the related movie producers and museum builders.

Looking through all the photos and reading your posts and reflections, it seems like you've all had an eye opening experience. I can't begin to imagine how the camps and museums looked in person because they're pretty stunning through the blog. The pictures of bodies and actually being able to see places where they cremated bodies is absolutely incredible. Truly an amazing experience, thank you for sharing. -Bianca Ortiz-Pallen

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